“Ilmari was eighteen years old,” Annabel said, coming to his side and gently resting her hand on his arm. “He’d been living and presenting as female for about a year and a half. His father was angry with us at first, but when he came over and saw how well Ilmari was doing socially, he mellowed. Troy could never say no to him. Usually it was me that wound up putting my foot down.
“My poor boy was desperately unhappy during his teens, Jake. I never saw a child so ill at ease with what nature was throwing at him. I understand that it’s not easy for any child, but Ilmari was at university. He was far away from both of us. He grew up behind our backs and there have been days when I thought he genuinely hated us for making him go through that alone.” She kept her eyes on the photograph, her expression fond and sorrowful.
“When he called me—and Mari never called me. It was always me, or Troy, calling him to find out what he was up to—but when he called, I came up to Cambridge right away and we went to see his therapist together. Ilmari seemed very composed. He knew what he wanted. Troy and I were both aware that he liked men, though he had a girlfriend at that time. He said that he felt awkward and uncomfortable as a man, and since puberty, he’d never been at home in his body. He wanted to transition. The therapist asked him a lot of questions and told him that he needed to try out living as a woman for a year, at least, before anyone would even consider letting him take the next step.”
Anni sighed deeply. Her expression was one of profound grief. “That night he told me that he wanted to die. He was broken and unhappy, Jake. And I couldn’t fix it for him. We went shopping together the next day and I helped him to choose clothes that he was more comfortable in. He got a makeover in one of the shops. We both got our nails done and went out for dinner. That was the happiest I ever saw him at any point in his teens. I convinced myself that he knew what he was doing.”
“He changed his mind? Or it was changed for him?” Solana asked. The Healer had been listening to all of this in silence and she looked as if something pained her.
“When he went to Barcelona, he was still presenting as female,” Anni replied. “He told me before he left that he was getting estrogen injections. I know for a fact that he didn’t get them through his regular doctor in Cambridge. They were making him ill. He didn’t seem unhappy when we spoke, but he told me that his specialist believed he was clinically depressed and wasn’t prepared to recommend him for surgical intervention. He was too thin and he wasn’t eating properly. I was concerned for him, but he was an adult. I couldn’t tell him how to live his life.”
Jake’s head was spinning in a thousand directions but his hand was steady as he put the photo album back into her hands. “I need to go.”
He turned toward the hall and Anni called after him, “Jake… I’m sorry. It isn’t my place to tell you, but you have the right to hear this if you’re serious about him. And I think you are. He’s stable at the moment, Jake, but…he’s seemed that way before.”
“I’m not angry. I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.” He didn’t like leaving her upset but he didn’t have it in him in that moment to give her any comfort, not until he’d had some time to think or until he’d talked to Mari about this.
“Don’t be too sharp with him,” she called after him as he headed for the door. “He loves you, Jake. He just doesn’t always understand how to express who he is and what he feels.”
She was wrong about that, Jake thought as he closed the door behind him and took the steps down to the street. Their relationship might have taken Mari longer to come to terms with, but once he had, he’d not left Jake wondering for very long. Still, he understood why she’d say that. Mari could be very direct but it wasn’t easy to get a handle on the workings of his mind or his emotions.
Currently, he’d settle for simply working out his own feelings. They kept slipping through his head and he was unable to settle on just one.
He thought of himself as fair minded and progressive when it came to topics like sexuality and gender. He got how nature, biology, the complexity of the human mind and all that stuff was not clear-cut, black and white like some people wanted to believe. He understood all of that, on an intellectual level anyway, but he’d never questioned his own gender and he’d only gone through a very brief period of confusion about his sexuality. He had hidden his desires for a long time, but he hadn’t been confused about being gay since he was a very young child.
He supposed if he was upset about anything, it was not being sure if this changed anything. It certainly didn’t change how he felt about Mari, but Jake had to wonder why he had never told him about this and what he would do if Mari ever decided he’d made the wrong decision. In his own mind, he was pretty sure that Mari was comfortable being a man, but what if he was deluded about that?
“Okay, don’t make problems where there are none, Chivis,” he muttered to himself. He debated heading into the park to see if he could find Mari there, but he wasn’t dressed for a run and Mari had enough of a lead on him that it was probably a safer bet to just go home and wait for him.
Chapter Fourteen
Jake was surprised to find that his boyfriend had beaten him to Maple Street and was shivering outside the door to his flat, hugging himself through the thin, thermal sweat top, like he’d had as much of a shock as Jake. As Mari set eyes on him, relief flickered in his gaze for a second, then gave way to concern.
“What’s wrong? You didn’t lose my dog, did you?” The jokey nature of the question didn’t disguise his anxiety well enough.
“As if he’d wander off without me,” Jake said. “I dropped him off at home.” He put his arm around Mari and landed a quick kiss on his lips before opening the door and letting them both inside.
“You didn’t answer me. What’s wrong?” Mari asked again, once they were out of the chill damp London air, in the comparative warmth of the hallway.
“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing to be worried about anyway. Let’s go upstairs and talk.”
Mari trailed him up to the tiny apartment on the first floor in silence but, as Jake knew, if he was quiet for too long, there genuinely was a problem.
“Talk about what?” he asked when the door was shut behind them and they were in the snug privacy of Jake’s living room. “What happened when you took Tonka home? Was that conniving bitch up to no good?” His eyes widened. “Is Mama okay? Does she need me?”
“Anni is fine. You think I’d leave her on her own if something were wrong?” Jake soothed him. Turning, he rested his hands on Mari’s upper arms, looking into those anxious eyes, which took him right back to the photograph. “Okay, I don’t want you getting worked up, I’m just going to spit it out. This is…awkward. Somehow—I don’t even understand how—but when I dropped Tonka off, your mother ended up showing me a picture of you…from when you were about eighteen. And it…it um…surprised me.”
Mari opened his mouth. Behind his eyes, Jake saw him doing the math. He closed it again and pulled away, putting a hand over his lips like he was afraid he might be sick. Jake gave him as much space as he needed, which was not much given the size of the flat and the speed his thoughts tended to run at. Jake felt sick too. When Mari came back to face him again his expression was harder, somehow. More guarded.
“You were there for a few minutes and she just…what? Showed you? Why? Why would she do that to me? Fuck it… It was her, wasn’t it? That Solana bitch! She’s been needling my mother, putting her up to this. Damn her! Jake… I would have told you, I swear.”
As the words fell from his lips, his face ran the gamut of emotions, from bewilderment to dismay, through shock and defensive rage, settling finally into a kind of distraught despair. Jake kept his expression and his voice very neutral, though his heart was thumping.
“I’m not mad, Ilmari. Were you afraid to tell me?”
Just for few moments, Mari’s eyes glistened with emotion then he blinked it away. His breathing hitched in his chest but he composed himself. He looked like he was s
entenced to death, though, and his head bowed.
“No. I just… I didn’t… I thought… Fuck it! I didn’t know how to talk to you about it.” He waved his hands vaguely then put them behind him like a child. He lifted his face again, chewing on his lips, and his eyes met Jake’s. “You’re really not mad about it?”
“No…not mad. Worried, maybe. That might be a better word.” Jake couldn’t stand the way Mari stared at him, like he was facing a firing squad. Like he expected Jake to be disgusted and tell him to go. “Mari, please don’t look at me like that. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”
Mari took a step, leaning into him, and Jake wrapped his arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. That was better—warm—holding him tight.
“I wasn’t sure…” Mari mumbled into his collar, snaking his arms around Jake and clinging on to him like he would never let go. “You told me once that you weren’t into girls, not one bit. That scared me. I thought that if I told you about me, you might not… You might not want me anymore.”
Jake closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of Mari’s hair, hugging him tight. “You were afraid? I suppose I would have been, too, if I thought I might lose you over something that I couldn’t change. I’m not…” He caught his breath, choosing his words carefully. “Seeing that picture… I can’t honestly say it didn’t freak me out a little, Mari. I had a pile of questions in my mind. But it didn’t make me want to stop being with you. It didn’t make me love you any less. You wanna tell me about it, maybe?”
Mari pulled his ‘aww shucks’ face but he mellowed and kissed Jake’s nose.
“I’m all sweaty… Let me have a shower. You can scrub my back if you want. And I’ll answer your questions as best I can.” He scowled briefly. “But first, tell me the truth. It was her, wasn’t it? That Solana woman? She started all this, I’d bet my kidneys. She has been stirring things since we first went to see her. I can’t believe Mama told her about me.”
Jake sighed. “I don’t even recall how the conversation started. Something about how you might see her as a challenge to your manhood. And when I said I didn’t think so, that’s when Anni showed me the picture. Your mom said that you wouldn’t tell me yourself but she figured I needed to know the truth.”
Mari’s stare was incredulous. “Unbelievable! I bet Solana’s a fucking hypnotist or something,” he exhaled at last. “Damn her! I tried my hardest to find some dirt on her but she’s squeaky clean. Even when she was plain old Andrew from Weston-super-Mare, she’d not got so much as a caution for shoplifting. What is she trying to do to me? I hate her!”
“Hate is a waste of energy, babe,” Jake told him and kissed his forehead. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. But I’d still like to hear why you didn’t… Why did you stop?”
Mari leaned forward, touching his brow to Jake’s as if he could somehow transmit all the truth that way and circumvent words. He closed his eyes for a moment or two then looked directly at Jake again, his face very serious.
“It wasn’t fixing anything for me, Jake. I was at a crossroads in my life. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be. I’d spent the previous six years, while I went through puberty, in an academic environment away from home, and my whole world changed during that period. I grew a foot taller in the first three years and I gained about thirty pounds. My voice dropped like you would not believe and I didn’t understand why this was happening to me. I hated it. I thought I was some kind of monster. I was surrounded by desirable older boys, and they were all hooking up and getting off with girls, but I just…couldn’t. I’d gone from being cute and adorable and…loved, to…some kind of gothic nightmare and I couldn’t handle it. Even my parents didn’t want me around.” His voice cracked and he looked down, shoulders slumped, damp hair tumbling around his face like a curtain. Jake lifted one hand, brushing his cheek with his fingers.
“I can’t imagine that,” he murmured tenderly, though his heart was aching.
“Why would they pack me off to university when I was barely more than a child?” Mari buried his face in Jake’s sweater and cried, unable to hold the tears in any longer. Jake had no answer to that question, so he just held Mari close and stroked his hair until he had his sobbing under control. Then he touched Mari’s wet cheek again.
Mari leaned his face into the caress. His words were soft and hoarse. “It was beyond imagination, trust me. And the guys at my college in the States? Oh my stars! Some of those guys made Nolan and his cronies look like sissies. And I wanted to get fucked by them real bad. But even as a kid, I knew that if I so much as looked at those bastards the wrong way, I would be chopped liver. So, I concentrated on girls, but the girls my age either wanted to be with football players, or just players, or with older men—guys with cars and money. And the few boys who were openly queer wanted something more…manly? Not me, anyway.” He stopped for breath and sniffed rapidly. “I’d tried so hard at Albany. I worked myself half to death for that degree. It was a sporty college, so I started to run there, too, in my last year. I worked out and lost loads of weight, mainly trying to impress a guy. Surprise, surprise! I got some definition out of it. Amazingly, I even got laid.
“And when I got to Cambridge, I hoped it would be different. I’d read about it and seen it in movies. I figured it would be cultured and all the men would be these amazing dandies and I’d find myself there. I’d bought some nice clothes and come all the way to England. I figured I could start again, in a new place, where people would get me. But it was no better here. People were…kinder, but I was still way out of step. I hung out with a group of women at my student halls and I felt safer there. More natural. And I thought…it felt right and that must mean I was meant to be a woman. I looked good in androgynous clothes and I wore my hair long, which not many guys that weren’t in bands did back then. So, I told them when I registered for my PhD that I wanted to change my name. The bursary staff were all very sweet. They called me Marijne and made a fuss of me. Mama came up from London and went to my early therapy appointments with me and she was always supportive. Papi was livid at first, I don’t think I ever saw him angry with Mama like he was that week. It took him a long time to come around to it, but we got there.”
Mari heaved a sigh and stared into space for a while, as if he were composing his thoughts. In quieter tones, he said, “I managed to get a boyfriend, though it didn’t last. He wanted something I couldn’t give him. Nothing else went right for me.”
“You got your doctorate. Something must have worked out,” Jake said tenderly, though he was still confused. It astounded him that Mari was capable of using so many words and still not telling him what he wanted to know.
“Yes,” his lover breathed. “Academically, I was a fucking genius. But socially it was like wading through sewage. I hit a point at Cambridge where I just wrote everything down because I didn’t dare say the words to people. For two years I worked right next to a guy and we communicated solely by email. I was terrified of attracting more attention. Everyone thought I was crazy, but there were a lot of crazy genius people there. I wasn’t on my own, at least.” Mari looked down toward his clenched fists, t,hen relaxed them and flexed his fingers. “I have never told anyone any of this. You are practically the only person, outside of family, that has ever treated me like I’m a human being, Jake Chivis.”
Jake had listened to this breathless, tearful tirade with his heart in his mouth, almost glad that Mari was desperate to talk because he didn’t have the words to express just how much this story kicked him in the chest. He kissed Mari’s hair.
“That’s a damn shame,” he whispered. “No one deserves to be treated that badly. Your mother said she thought you were happy, though, when you started to live as a woman. It seems like some things got better for you at least. So, what happened? What made you change your mind?”
Mari got that harried look on his face again—there for an instant but quickly wrapped away behind his faux confident smile. “Maybe my t
herapist was right. The idea of surgery terrified me. Then I got sick and I had to stop taking my estrogen. And without it I didn’t feel…complete enough. So, I quit. If I couldn’t be perfect, I didn’t want to try. No one loves a freak.” The muscles between Mari’s shoulders twitched under Jake’s hand and his voice took on a bitter edge on those last words. There was more to that decision than Mari was telling him.
“Those aren’t your words,” Jake said, not making it a question. “This would have been after you’d graduated, right? And moved to Spain, started a new job. Then got involved with a manipulative older man that didn’t tell you he was married.”
“Jake, there was more to it than that. You’ve seen how I am. You knew what pushed my buttons within a month or so of being with me.” Mari shrugged off his hoodie and peeled the sweat-damp vest away from his lean, run-toned body, letting it drop to the floor. “I need a strong hand. I always did. And trying to be a man but needing to be with someone stronger…someone who could manage me like that. It was hard for me. I’m not small and cute. Hell, you’re the only man I’ve been with who was anywhere near my height.”
“Uh-huh. You were what, twenty, twenty-one? Used to feeling like the misfit, uncomfortable with your body, socially awkward and sexually inexperienced. And your boss turned out to be a shithead who preyed on those insecurities.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Mari said in a dull tone. He wriggled out of his tight leggings. Mari may have convinced himself his decision not to transition had nothing to do with his disastrous affair with Tomas Arregui but Jake could practically feel the discomfort radiating off him and knew he wasn’t that far off the mark. He recalled the smug expression on Arregui’s handsome face and wished wholeheartedly he’d wiped that look off when he’d had the chance.
“I don’t want to talk about him. I feel filthy just thinking about it,” Mari said, unwilling to even meet his eyes. “Every time I get a moment in the sun, something comes along to make it dark and horrible for me. I need to get clean.” He looked up at Jake with soulful eyes. “And I need you to whip me.”
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